And you’ll be able to read about each one those arguments here on the CLB blog.  Look here a few days after the arguments for discussions of these fascinating cases, listed below with their argument dates and their “questions presented”.  You can also go here to listen to the CLB podcast on these five cases.

Feb 19     Bowman v. Monsanto

Whether the Federal Circuit erred by (1) refusing to find patent exhaustion – a doctrine which eliminates the right to control or prohibit the use of an invention after an authorized sale – in patented seeds that were sold for planting; and (2) creating an exception to the doctrine of patent exhaustion for self-replicating technologies.

Feb. 26   Maryland v. King

Whether the Fourth Amendment allows the states to collect and analyze DNA from people arrested and charged with serious crimes.

Mar. 19   Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett

Whether the First Circuit Court of Appeals erred when it created a circuit split and held – in clear conflict with this Court’s decisions in PLIVA v. Mensing, Riegel v. Medtronic, and Cipollone v. Liggett Group – that federal law does not preempt state law design-defect claims targeting generic pharmaceutical products because the conceded conflict between such claims and the federal laws governing generic pharmaceutical design allegedly can be avoided if the makers of generic pharmaceuticals simply stop making their products.

Mar. 25   FTC v. Actavis (formerly Watson),

Whether reverse-payment agreements are per se lawful unless the underlying patent litigation was a sham or the patent was obtained by fraud (as the court below held), or instead are presumptively anticompetitive and unlawful (as the Third Circuit has held). (Alito, J., recused)

April 15  Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.

Whether human genes are patentable.

Hank Greely